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Lol that reminds me, I've had a hankering to re-read Stranger in a Strange Land. I know it's problematic as hell but for some reason I find it to be a comfort read.
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May 1, 2020 12:32
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This is pretty interesting because I've only read the first two Murderbots, but I automatically gendered it as masculine in my head. I think the key is how it is "learning emotions" at a late developmental stage, which makes for the irony and humor, but also reminds me of how boys/men mature on a slower timescale than girls/women. Basically I'm thinking of it like an autistic young man, even though that's obviously problematic it's apparently what my brain has decided to do.
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May 8, 2020 20:24
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ClydeFrog posted:Wow I really fell down the SCP wiki rabbit hole. Google for the "scp to epub" GitHub site, they have tons of converted stories/entries with high-quality formatting.
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Mar 24, 2021 15:17
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Bradbury's not actively awful in his writing (although I believe he went hard on the anti-Islam at some point, or at least I have a vague recollection of that) but his writing is mostly... I don't really know the right way to put it. Aggressively folksy? It's like, small town Americana, and I understand why that gets canonized in a genre mostly defined by white men before the modern era but it's not actually good. I think it's really good for younger readers. I have very fond memories of Bradbury, at least -- and I haven't really been able to enjoy him as an adult. Hmmm.
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May 11, 2021 18:38
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Ccs posted:That sounds a lot like a class I got to take in sophmore year of highschool. The first semester was "Great Books" (stuff like The Prince, Dante's Infenro, some other stuff I've forgotten) and half "Contemporary Literature" with Pattern Recognition by Gibson, Watchmen, and more stuff I can't remember. We kind of skipped by all the 1950-1970 sci-fi stuff though cause it wasn't contemporary enough. Really fun class, it was elective so people were actually excited to be there and discuss books. Right after that class I had my normal sophomore english class where the teacher couldn't get a bunch of STEM kids to give a poo poo about All Quiet on the Western Front or Catch-22. Hell, that's better than 99% of the English classes I've ever seen in HS curricula. Also if anyone doesn't like Catch-22, that's on them.
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May 11, 2021 23:11
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A Proper Uppercut posted:FYI, while the Culture books are really good, some of them go to some hosed up places, quite a departure from the Wayfarers books. Speaking of this, I just picked up Surface Detail from the used-book shop and it is....uh, there is some content there to be warned about. It doesn't bother me but I can certainly see how it might be an issue for some readers.
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Jun 20, 2021 22:00
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minema posted:Yeah my fears were completely unfounded, I've read the whole book now and it was just that PoV character's thoughts and not repeated again, when seen from other characters PoV it's much more balanced Yep, but that first chapter really sticks with you. Years after I read the trilogy, it's one of the clearest scenes in my memory. I seem to remember it being very sensuous prose and of course the main action is practically a climax despite being just fifteen pages into the book.
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Jun 26, 2021 18:42
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withak posted:I thought he said that Seveneves was the result of a "What if the moon exploded?" prompt. No, his original thought experiment was "how can I plausibly make a setting where all these aliens are also clearly human-derived?" It required scouring the planet's surface because he wanted to get them into space (or underground) before they started evolving away from each other. A very frustrating book, there were parts of it that were interesting and the primary plot arc wasn't awful. But there's so much wrong with it, too -- and I still haven't read the last third of the book.
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Nov 18, 2021 18:17
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I just found an old pulp copy of Harry Harrison's Deathworld Trilogy. I expected nothing, and yet it's compulsively readable. Do I need to find more from this guy?
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Feb 10, 2022 21:47
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branedotorg posted:West of Eden, his what if dinosaurs evolved instead of humans. It's a big sort of terrible but also a bit great. Okay yeah that's my kind of dumb poo poo
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Feb 11, 2022 00:18
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Runcible Cat posted:Not quite what you're asking for, but Ian Watson's Queenmagic, Kingmagic starts off in a chess-based universe, which the protagonists escape to find themselves in universes based on other boardgames... This sounds awful and amazing.
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Mar 30, 2022 18:56
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freebooter posted:Yeah I think that's what it came down to, I read them in the 2000s but if I'd been waiting years for the next book in a great series and then got a very long flashback I would have been annoyed. Allow me to assure you, as someone who bought DT III when it first came out, that "annoyed" does not cover it. I was absolutely convinced the son of a bitch was gonna die without finishing it, and then he got hit by a van.
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Apr 6, 2022 15:05
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FPyat posted:Hanya Yanagihara has also written a Cloud Atlas-like book called To Paradise. No. Hell no. Naw. Nope.
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May 23, 2022 13:36
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Anything Samuel R. Delany says on a topic, is the final word on that topic. edit: OH WOW WAS I WRONG ABOUT THAT mdemone fucked around with this message at 16:36 on May 23, 2022 |
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May 23, 2022 16:05
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General Battuta posted:With a few possible exceptions about NAMBLA I think. Aw c'mon, say it ain't so. 
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May 23, 2022 16:14
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*throws hat down and stomps on it* Well goddamnit
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May 23, 2022 16:36
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3D Megadoodoo posted:YA is 100% an Anglo thing. Just read books in adult languages. More specifically, it's a publishing thing. American capitalism, as usual.
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Jun 8, 2022 13:20
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StrixNebulosa posted:Written by a man who kept children in literal cages so uh 
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Jun 14, 2022 13:05
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zoux posted:I think I got to the part where he was well, actuallying his magic teacher as a freshman at Magic U while all the comely wench co-eds swooned - this is after owning some magic jock with banter - and then I was like, ok what does this author look like, does he look like I bet, and he did. If he ever publishes the last book, I'll read it, but I won't be happy about it.
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Jan 23, 2023 20:00
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Captain Monkey posted:Was that before or after he was a world class acrobat prodigy at age 7, who immediately accidentally mastered magic after one conversation with a wandering wizard, but was TOO GOOD at magic and almost hurt himself, but totally didn't actually suffer any negative effects from how he was too awesome at magic? After that, but before he out-fucks the sex fairy
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Jan 23, 2023 20:08
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General Battuta posted:I NARUTO RUN AT THE FOOTBALL WITH MY THERMAL AND LIDAR LOCKED ON TO ITS POLYVINYL STITCHES PREPARED TO PUNT THAT MOTHERFUCKER INTO ORBIT BUT LUCY DISPERSES PARTICULATES AND FLARES AND WHEN I DO MY KI SHOUT AND ENGAGE THE EXOASSISTED POWER KICK THERE'S NOTHING THERE CAUSE SHE PULLED THE FOOTBALL OUTTA THE WAY AND ALL I DO IS FALL SO HARD I FRACTURE MY rear end AND poo poo MY CYBERPANTS Mr. Musk, phone call on line 3, Mr. Musk, line 3
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Jan 27, 2023 18:12
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Tiny Timbs posted:This poster’s funeral will be a private affair and we ask that instead of attending in person you consider donating to a charity they would have supported oh god I'm so sorry. Holden is a child who is broken by trauma and will forever be stunted by it, and you can't read the book as an adult without feeling incredible empathy for him. assigning that novel to teenagers and expecting them NOT to try to identify with a teenage protagonist is folly, so of course they're put off by his actions and behaviors which are not at all explicable without understanding the trauma part. Salinger was probably appalled that it became a book taught to students.
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Feb 1, 2023 19:40
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General Battuta posted:I agree with you - and that's why I don't think teleporters are particularly troubling. That's what they do, they turn you into nothing and then put you back together with different atoms. And atoms are all interchangeable. This is why it seems pretty clear to me that the "self" does not exist at all, and "you" only exist in the symbolic/linguistic order, not a physical order. There is no continuity problem because emergent phenomena cannot constitute anything fixed that has to be continuously existing. I said that part badly but hopefully it gets the point across.
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Mar 14, 2023 18:31
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Captain Monkey posted:My point included the fact that the teleporter technology in Star Trek assumes that we do, because of the continuity of thought/personality. You're right that at this stage in our technological development we do not, but we also can't move matter via teleportation or travel between the stars at FTL either. Even if the teleporters do not ensure continuity, there would be no way for anyone to tell. My personal head canon is that the teleporters do in fact "kill" the Trek characters and then rebuild them elsewhere, but nobody notices because it's impossible to discern.
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Mar 15, 2023 17:08
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Zoracle Zed posted:is this thread caught in a time loop We could have had this same conversation dozens, maybe even hundreds of times
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Mar 15, 2023 17:27
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Captain Monkey posted:If it's impossible to discern, then what's the difference? I'm not trying to be obtuse or argumentative, but like zoux pointed out, that gap in awareness is a natural part of the human experience. You aren't even the same entity that you were when you made your post, in the way that you'd have to define an entity if teleporters kill you. Oh I agree. As I said, I think this points to the lack of existence of a "self" rather than anything particularly profound about our consciousness.
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Mar 15, 2023 17:28
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Also read Sphere, if you somehow haven't.
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Mar 20, 2023 18:12
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Well damnit now I have to reread Blindsight. Thanks you fuckers
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Mar 21, 2023 16:33
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Mrenda posted:I think it does, much like many existential books. Siri is pushed so far that he recognises he is human. Questions about whether he was human all along are irrelevant, the humanity was always there, and others would and did certainly recognise it. But the struggle to be and feel human, and at some point the recognition of this humanity is the very human thing. If he had opened up to others earlier he would have recognised it. And if he read Sartre, Camus or Beckett you'd hope he'd recognise it (he probably wouldn't.) But all these questions and examinations of what it is to be human exist. And, as I originally said, this story has monsters instead. I think Watts' authorial project is to place these questions of free will alongside the "life is pain" threads in order to test the boundaries of each proposition, not necessarily to relate them directly to each other. And yes, Siri is a tragic character. However he's not roughed up nearly as badly as protagonists in some other Watts novels. Talk about your desperate straits...
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Mar 21, 2023 17:55
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Nuclear Tourist posted:Peter Watts and Joe Abercrombie once showed up at a bookstore I lived nearby at the time. Peter signed my copy of Blindsight and we chatted for a few moments. Seemed like a nice guy! It was...good. I don't think it was as good as Blindsight, but then again, despite having some themes in common, it treads some different ground. Definitely worth reading if you enjoyed Blindsight at all.
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Mar 21, 2023 18:05
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To me, Watts' main strength is that you come away from his books with your philosophical imagination just firing on all cylinders. I kinda agree with you about the text of Blindsight; it's not nearly as tight as a lot of other examples in the genre. Somehow it sticks with you and the ideas keep festering, though...
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Mar 21, 2023 18:33
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General Battuta posted:Blindsight was one of the first works I can think of, in any field, which openly said "consciousness may not be a very important part of cognition". Thomas Ligotti deals in very much the same currency. I think I encountered both authors around the same time in my life, which was fairly formative. Edit: Cormac McCarthy goes there in his new duology as well
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Mar 21, 2023 18:54
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I don't think Battuta is saying the thought doesn't exist in the world without this book, I think he's just saying that the text does manage to get you to ask that question. Pretty sure you just disagree, I don't think it was an insult.
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Mar 21, 2023 20:05
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Remulak posted:Great, now I need to read Blindsight again. Every time I do that it makes the trivial entertainment I usually read and enjoy feel like trivial entertainment I can’t enjoy and a waste of time. Ah well. I'm already 80 pages in. Again.
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Mar 21, 2023 22:04
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sebmojo posted:Yeah, it's an incredible book in many ways but iirc it's kind of a mess, like the movie sunshine, where structural elements damage the overall effect despite a bunch of individual strengths Could have definitely used an experienced editor, which it obviously did not have.
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Mar 21, 2023 23:14
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Mrenda posted:He's asked a lot of questions. He answered them with a fight. We've talked about the novel, some—to me—good conversations. Is that good enough? Absolutely. Did the novel start off with promise, for me, and end in a place I didn't fully enjoy? Yes. I think I've identified your main issue with the text. It lacks the structure that we associate with high art, with advanced symmetries. Which is certainly true, but a novel can succeed and inspire without having much structure -- just ask Stephen King, who famously doesn't outline or draft: he just starts writing poo poo down. I think it's just that Peter Watts isn't necessarily a "trained writer", beyond a certain knack with phrasing and his technical-writing skill from a scientific background, and he had a poo poo ton of awesome ideas without the experience to be able to fully shape that into a Really Great Novel.
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Mar 21, 2023 23:36
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fritz posted:Haven't read Blindsight, but if I scramblerize myself can I still face to bloodshed? Imagine you are Siri Keeton...
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Mar 22, 2023 00:16
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I just came across a relevant passage:quote:“It says it wants to be left alone," Szpindel said. "Even if it doesn't mean it.”
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Mar 22, 2023 01:17
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:FWIW my personal belief is that if consciousness weren't adaptive it wouldn't have been so heavily selected for. Consciousness wasn't selected for by a natural process. It allowed us to hijack the natural process and break out perpendicularly to it. The most fit organisms on the planet, the ones who have remained basically the same for hundreds of millions of years, do not have consciousness or anything approaching it. The fact that self-aware conciousness has been "successful" in reproducing itself doesn't mean anything in the evolutionary sense because evolution gives not a single poo poo about timescales like human history. quote:I have a hard time wrapping my head around an entity with a sense of self-preservation but no sense of self Sharks. Most birds. Insects. Or basically any animal that is not a higher primate or a dolphin or a whale.
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Mar 22, 2023 15:16
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General Battuta posted:There's an interesting hypothesis, in research about pain, which suggests that some squid can't feel pain as a localized phenomenon—because, well, what could they do about it? Squid are generally small and highly edible. It doesn't really matter how or where they're hurt, just that they get away from whatever's hurting them. So they just feel a general sense of 'injury' which causes them to emit remedial behaviors like 'run away'. Insects operate much the same way. They register damage, and try to avoid being damaged, but it's just like "welp now I've lost a wing"
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Mar 22, 2023 15:24
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